The intersection of queer and punk is both broad and well-traveled and so it stands to reason that there are quite a few films representing same at this year's Frameline. I previewed a few of the more punk and punk-leaning docs appearing in the festival this year and a few selections stood above the rest.
The first of these, Miwa: A Japanese Icon, is certainly less "punk" per se but nonetheless guided by a spirit of resistance and irreverence that is punk's hallmark. The French-made doc candidly (and a bit cheekily) presents Akihiro Miwa (Miwa to his fans) as a sort of elder statesman of Japanese queerdom. In contrast to his frequent, often catty Japanese daytime TV persona, Miwa appears charming, subdued, and composed, recalling his life and successes from one of the ornate thrones that apparently populate his home. Japan during pre-modern periods held no stigma against homosexuality, according to Miwa and the film's historians; prevailing attitudes were introduced after the war when European interests began to hold sway in a Japan striving for modernization. Recognized nationally as the nation's only "out" homosexual in post-war Japan for some time, Miwa became a focal point for the country's gay community in exile.
Though the doc pays ample attention to fetching glossies of the actor and musician as a young man and duly covers the circumstances of his childhood, the film's focus lies with the evolution of the Japanese cinematic landscape throughout which Miwa's career is woven, beginning with his role in the rise of exploitation master Kinji Fukasaku, who directed an iconic turn in Black Lizard at Miwa's request. Edogawa Rampo's novel Black Lizard was adapted for the screen by Japanese literary royalty Yukio Mishima, whose unfaltering—and unrequited—admiration jumpstarted Miwa's career. Miwa also made appearances in the radical protest films of Shūji Terayama during the 1970s, a spate of voice acting done for anime legend Hayao Miyazaki, and—in a somewhat less concrete moment—an affiliation with Takeshi Kitano from both his saloon days and the present. Miwa's ability to remain active in Japan's filmic culture for all these years coupled with his unwavering acceptance by modern Japanese as an icon of glamour and femininity can only lead one to wonder what the American landscape would look like if intolerance to homosexuality was a footnote in our culture, instead of a hallmark.
Hit So Hard is one of the better docs of the mid-90s grunge scene, framed by out lesbian Patty Schemel, long-suffering drummer of Hole and friend of Kurt Cobain. This kinetic doc captures the fever-dream rush of the band's massive success and the chaos following the death of Cobain, featuring the requisite footage of Courtney Love's unhinged personality and genuinely charming home videos that reveal better times. Despite her inevitable fall from favor around the release of the band's third album and the struggle with addiction that fills out the second half of the doc, Schemel appears older and wiser here, but no worse for wear. Those with an interest in the machinations of major-label music industry will find a good deal to chew on here.
Those who find Hit So Hard a little too soft and cuddly will find the ante upped significantly in Lilly Scourtis Ayers' Last Fast Ride: The Life, Love and Death Of A Punk Goddess, which—although not exploitative—can't help but rough us up a little as it presents the life of Marian Anderson, front singer for Insaints and Thrill Killers, whose on-stage antics led to a trial for obscenity and off-stage antics eventually led to her death by heroin overdose in 2001. Though much of her life was spent elsewhere, Marian's life is inextricably wrapped in Bay Area lore—she grew up a troubled teen in Modesto, later moving to the city where she lived in squats, occasionally working as a dominatrix at Fantasy Makers (still a standby in the Berkeley S&M scene), and running through a series of local legends, including Tim Yohannan, founder of Berkeley posi-punk cornerstone 924 Gilman Street and punk mag Maximum RocknRoll, which published both the Insaints albums and J.D.s' notorious queercore provocation "Don't Be Gay", before settling into a tumultuous long term relationship with Danielle Bernal, a self-described "butch dyke" and one of Last Fast Ride's central personalities.
Alongside lengthy interviews with Marian, Danielle and family, Last Fast Ride features interviews with punk luminaries ranging from Tim Armstrong of Rancid to SF scene stalwarts and boasts an even compassionate narration by punk touchstone and longtime LGBT advocate Henry Rollins. Even if none of these names sound familiar, the price of admission covers a great amount of titillating performance footage, nudity and all, though nothing on the order of the live excrement-and-blood bacchanals of GG Allin, who Marian acknowledges was an influence. To it's credit, Ayers avoids exploiting its very exploitable subject. Last Fast Ride is too even-handed in its presentation of Marian's lifestyle to pose as a cautionary tale. Instead, it's an engrossing look at a woman on and over the edge and the base desperation that pervaded the SF punk scene in the mid 90s.
Although it wasn't available for preview, a compendium of this year's more "punk" offerings would be incomplete without mention of Shut Up Little Man: An Audio Misadventure, the subject of which has inspired (and been sampled by) artists as far ranging as John Zorn, Nirvana and comic author Daniel Clowes. The classic taped rantings of an alcoholic odd couple have been touted by a variety of sources as visible as Spin and as underground as your older sister's 'zine, since their appearance nearly 20 years ago, and only now are finally receiving the documentary treatment.
Cross-published on Twitch.
"No man knows what he will do when driven by hunger." Falsely attributed to Alexander Pearce—so called "cannibal convict" of Tasmania and subject of his own 2008 DTV shocker Dying Breed—this epigram could easily have been spoken of devoted fans of Another Hole In The Head ("Holehead"), San Francisco's annual indie horror / sci-fi / fantasy feast. Genre fans, driven, insatiable, and hungry for gore, consume any and all offerings shoveled their way—a casualty of their insatiable hunger being that, like the cannibal convict, they seldom remember the name of their last meal.
Doubtless the most complete film at HoleHead this year was Mike Flanagan's dread-centric character drama Absentia, singled out for a Variety review by prolific SF critic Dennis Harvey (serving a much–needed role as the festival's unofficial cheerleader this year). Callie, an ex-addict in recovery from an unspecified drug, comes to visit her sister Tricia at her Glendale home, where she is preparing to finally declare her husband Daniel "dead in absentia" a long seven years after his disappearance. In Daniel's absence, Tricia's life has moved on, her bills have piled up, and she's become involved with the local detective charged with upkeep on her husband's case. What appears to be largely a clerical matter turns out to be much graver when Daniel begins to appear in horrifying visions and finally re-emerges in the real world, shocked into near-catatonia by his ordeal.
As details emerge we learn that Daniel has been kept by a creature in a world "underneath" our world, released not as a response to Tricia's declaration but as a consequence of a trade accidentally initiated by Callie at the mouth of the pedestrian underpass in which "it" resides. In the course of uncovering the history of the creature, Flanagan can't help but include a few trite shots of aging police reports and newspaper articles and a brief rant about the bible and the existence of other dimensions, but he quickly course corrects, and smartly wraps these in favor of a well-acted (and dismayingly believable) character drama.
What differentiates Absentia from similar fare, apart from its low incidence of creature effects, is that it dares to dwell on the way real humans rationalize the supernatural—not by begrudgingly admitting its existence, but by rationalizing it as the most farfetched of a number of much more plausible possibilities. Ultimately, Absentia declares, there is no way we can ever assent to the truth of the supernatural, as admitting its existence would draw us into it—as it does Callie—and ultimately destroying our connection to reality. It's a complex idea, but not necessarily one that guarantees traction with the crowd who enjoy the genre for its more hoary, gory conventions. Absentia sits comfortably between character driven sci-fi like Donnie Darko and the more abstract, earthbound horrors of Japanese director Kiyoshi Kurosawa (Cure, Doppelganger). Taken together with his intriguing, one-bright-room horror short Oculus, Flanagan is emerging as a promising genre director with a unique vision of horror.
Having been introduced to both Borowczyk's The Beast and John Boorman's Zardoz at HoleHead back in 2006, I anticipated the unearthing of at least one minor classic in 2011. The fest befuddled my expectations, screening The Book, a no-budget sci-fi puzzler appearing to be a cult discovery from the genre's boom times in the 70s, but actually completed only last year. The plot of The Book is a bit of an artifact in itself: seeking to spread their influence through a forged manuscript, aliens kidnap and replace a prominent author and his family. It's simple, but spacious enough to accommodate depthy (and faux-depthy) interior monologues about the nature of writing, fame, and the nature of being human—all added, according to its director, "Ø", after the filming was complete.
Somehow appearing to pre-date its influences, The Book toasts the classics. In grand outdoor post-apocalyptic scenes, it glimpses Fellini's Satyricon, its denouement echoes the home invasion scenes of A Clockwork Orange (perhaps due in part to its cast of professional stage actors), Fassbinder's recently screened World On A Wire and a hundred others twinkle in its dated and glamorous futurism. The sets and effects are kitsch and charming—an apartment festooned with colored cellophane and tinfoil, baffling food stolen from the tables of Terry Gilliam's Brazil, and re-contextualized local color, most notably Frank Lloyd Wright's turquoise biomorph, the Marin Civic Center. The Book is goofy and endearing, but not quite dopey or camp enough to carry instant cult potential, which is a shame, as it's as enjoyable as anything in Ed Wood's canon, a bit more meaningful and much more intelligent.
Though not as strong as The Book, HoleHead deserves recognition for its broad selection of SF entries this year, the best of which was Red Ice, which manages to be very smart and very San Francisco, and by this I mean that it features a transsexual succubus, a crack-smoking flautist, and a campily sycophantic Asian demon-monger. The Craving echoes its SF setting similarly, toasting local foodie culture with the tale of a lesbian chef with a discerning palate for human flesh. Apocrypha, recasting the now-weathered vampire narrative as a personality conflict heavy with SF locales and refs and Breath of Hate, buoyed the savage charisma of longtime character-villain Ezra Buzzington and bizarrely watchable Jason Mewes, both perform well but fall outside the mark.
Cross-published on Twitch.
[Allow me to introduce the most recent intern for The Evening Class, Jackson Scarlett, known to local cinephiles through his efforts for the Global Film Initiative and as publicity coordinator for the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival. We welcome his contributed focus on some of the French films programmed into the 54th edition of the San Francisco International Film Festival (SFIFF54).]
* * *
My excitement over SFIFF54's announcement of Tindersticks: Claire Denis Film Scores 1996-2009—tempered by my disappointment that Denis herself was not expected to attend this year's festival—led to the soothing observation that in their 54th edition SFIFF's vision of French cinema intriguingly comports with Denis's own: evoking her vigilant attention to inequalities of race and class, and her ongoing preoccupation—both obscure and direct—with issues of alienation, motherhood, and genealogical quests for personal identity and meaning.
Incendies (dir. Denis Villeneuve, Canada / France, 2010)—I caught Villeneuve's latest Oscar®-nominated film in 35mm at a press screening, which was a treat. This time-spanning narrative drives its central conflict forward through an unnamed country in the Middle East, touching upon the honor of the notary code, the dislocations of religious terrorism, and family reconciliation through the revelation of long-buried secrets. It sweeps across its vast landscapes and thematic scope with seeming effortlessness. In its tale of a mother's quest to secure meaning in her own life, and her children's quest to understand their mother's deathbed instructions and—thereby—the truth of their own origins, Incendies elevates a woman's arduous individuation to adventurous heights. Already a festival highlight in my book, I'm eager to re-watch it when Sony Classics brings it out in wider release.
The Place In Between (Sarah Bouyain, France / Burkina Faso, 2010)—Presented in association with the Museum of the African Diaspora and a New Directors Prize Contender, The Place In Between treads similar territory to Incendies but through a distinct voice, humanizing the search for self-actualization through family history. The film connects the lives of two women: one who supplements her earnings as a cleaning woman by teaching Dioula in her spare time—thereby, tentatively revisiting a culture she had once abandoned—and the other who searches in a foreign land for a mother she has never known. Where conversational misunderstandings in Incendies provided grist for the mill of its roiling narrative, The Place In Between situates its most poignant moments in the spaces where language fails altogether, creating a realistic and ethnographic feel to the film that befits Bouyain's background as a documentary filmmaker. This documentary impulse, along with the film's excellent soundtrack, is where The Place In Between is at its most evocative.
The Sleeping Beauty / La Belle Endormie (Catherine Breillat, France, 2010)—Breillat's latest costumed commentary on femininity nearly obliterates the mother as it beckons a young princess—played by the undeniably talented newcomer Carla Besnaïnou—into adulthood through a string of fantastical encounters. Using a cast mostly comprised of children, the film weaves an interesting tale of adventure but fails to exercise the kind of care that elevated her last film, Bluebeard (Barbe Bleue, 2009), to headier territory. Instead, Sleeping Beauty flounders—oscillating wildly between Jan Švankmajer's sublimely surreal Alice (Něco z Alenky, 1988) and 1985's imbalanced, surreal-for-entirely-different-reasons televised version of Alice In Wonderland—until it awakens awkwardly in the present day, shedding its fairy-tale trappings for a facsimile of the harsh didacticism that made Anatomy of Hell (Anatomie de l'enfer, 2004) such a treat.
Children of the Princess of Cleves / Nous, princesses de Clèves (Régis Sauder, France, 2009)—A princess of a different sort emerges in the American premiere of this class-act documentary: an unforced inspection of a lower-tier school in Marseille whose students are studying the literary classic La Princesse de Clèves—recently revived in the French public consciousness by disparaging remarks made by President Nicolas Sarkozy—in preparation for their baccalaureate exam. In a surprisingly inspired bit of filmmaking, passages from the novel act as a formal device, sectioning the film into metaphorical frameworks for director Sauder and his subjects to organize their thoughts on school, sex, and sociality within not only the subjective context of their teenage years but also within the wide swath of France's marginalized ethnic communities. Suggestions that the all-or-nothing approach of the bac—and by extension France itself—endangers these nascent adults are left mostly to the audience, but such a connection is heavily implied in this rough but right-hearted effort.
Living on Love Alone / D'amour et d'eau fraîche (Isabelle Czajka, France, 2010)—An ugly duckling in this year's lineup, Living on Love Alone plays out typical "French" cinematic clichés: namely smoking, sex, and ennui. As it slickly switches from the tale of a rootless, promiscuous young woman to a sweet Bonnie & Clyde romance, Living On Love Alone takes pains to maintain a light tone suitable for viewing in mixed company, even as at times the quotidian criminality of George Sluizer's 1988 classic The Vanishing crept to mind.
Hands Up / Les mains en l'air (Romain Goupil, France, 2010)—Though it's the only film to directly moralize on the running themes of SFIFF's French selections this year—alienation, motherhood, and the legitimization of foreign nationals as part of French Culture—Hands Up keeps it date-night light, focusing on the reminiscence of young love and childhood's magic while infantilizing the political strife backgrounding its story as a conflict between kid-aligned mom Valerie Bruni-Tedeschi and her "evil" husband. Rich in its nostalgic mood, and sparkling with talented and adorably cute children, the kid in me wasn't satisfied with the limited payoffs of the film's clever contrivances, which ultimately fails to make hay with its innovative framing (it's narrated from the year 2067).
A Cat In Paris / Une vie de chat (Alain Gagnol & Jean-Loup Felicioli, France / Belgium / Netherlands / Switzerland, 2010)—Dino, the cat of record, splits his time between Nico, a skilled cat burglar, and Zoe, a young girl who—in classic cartoon tradition—wisely remains mute so that we can project only the best characteristics upon her. While there's a good deal to like, between the rather adult police thriller in which Zoe and crew find themselves embroiled, and the film's zippy chase sequences, I found myself mesmerized by Cat's lovely storybook-like animation and Nico's delightful serpentine mode of motion; wondrous to behold. Screening Out of Competition in SFIFF's New Directors sidebar.
Cross-published on Twitch.
The intersection of queer and punk is both broad and well-traveled and so it stands to reason that there are quite a few films representing same at this year's Frameline. I previewed a few of the more punk and punk-leaning docs appearing in the festival this year and a few selections stood above the rest.
The first of these, Miwa: A Japanese Icon, is certainly less "punk" per se but nonetheless guided by a spirit of resistance and irreverence that is punk's hallmark. The French-made doc candidly (and a bit cheekily) presents Akihiro Miwa (Miwa to his fans) as a sort of elder statesman of Japanese queerdom. In contrast to his frequent, often catty Japanese daytime TV persona, Miwa appears charming, subdued, and composed, recalling his life and successes from one of the ornate thrones that apparently populate his home. Japan during pre-modern periods held no stigma against homosexuality, according to Miwa and the film's historians; prevailing attitudes were introduced after the war when European interests began to hold sway in a Japan striving for modernization. Recognized nationally as the nation's only "out" homosexual in post-war Japan for some time, Miwa became a focal point for the country's gay community in exile.
Though the doc pays ample attention to fetching glossies of the actor and musician as a young man and duly covers the circumstances of his childhood, the film's focus lies with the evolution of the Japanese cinematic landscape throughout which Miwa's career is woven, beginning with his role in the rise of exploitation master Kinji Fukasaku, who directed an iconic turn in Black Lizard at Miwa's request. Edogawa Rampo's novel Black Lizard was adapted for the screen by Japanese literary royalty Yukio Mishima, whose unfaltering—and unrequited—admiration jumpstarted Miwa's career. Miwa also made appearances in the radical protest films of Shūji Terayama during the 1970s, a spate of voice acting done for anime legend Hayao Miyazaki, and—in a somewhat less concrete moment—an affiliation with Takeshi Kitano from both his saloon days and the present. Miwa's ability to remain active in Japan's filmic culture for all these years coupled with his unwavering acceptance by modern Japanese as an icon of glamour and femininity can only lead one to wonder what the American landscape would look like if intolerance to homosexuality was a footnote in our culture, instead of a hallmark.
Hit So Hard is one of the better docs of the mid-90s grunge scene, framed by out lesbian Patty Schemel, long-suffering drummer of Hole and friend of Kurt Cobain. This kinetic doc captures the fever-dream rush of the band's massive success and the chaos following the death of Cobain, featuring the requisite footage of Courtney Love's unhinged personality and genuinely charming home videos that reveal better times. Despite her inevitable fall from favor around the release of the band's third album and the struggle with addiction that fills out the second half of the doc, Schemel appears older and wiser here, but no worse for wear. Those with an interest in the machinations of major-label music industry will find a good deal to chew on here.
Those who find Hit So Hard a little too soft and cuddly will find the ante upped significantly in Lilly Scourtis Ayers' Last Fast Ride: The Life, Love and Death Of A Punk Goddess, which—although not exploitative—can't help but rough us up a little as it presents the life of Marian Anderson, front singer for Insaints and Thrill Killers, whose on-stage antics led to a trial for obscenity and off-stage antics eventually led to her death by heroin overdose in 2001. Though much of her life was spent elsewhere, Marian's life is inextricably wrapped in Bay Area lore—she grew up a troubled teen in Modesto, later moving to the city where she lived in squats, occasionally working as a dominatrix at Fantasy Makers (still a standby in the Berkeley S&M scene), and running through a series of local legends, including Tim Yohannan, founder of Berkeley posi-punk cornerstone 924 Gilman Street and punk mag Maximum RocknRoll, which published both the Insaints albums and J.D.s' notorious queercore provocation "Don't Be Gay", before settling into a tumultuous long term relationship with Danielle Bernal, a self-described "butch dyke" and one of Last Fast Ride's central personalities.
Although it wasn't available for preview, a compendium of this year's more "punk" offerings would be incomplete without mention of Shut Up Little Man: An Audio Misadventure, the subject of which has inspired (and been sampled by) artists as far ranging as John Zorn, Nirvana and comic author Daniel Clowes. The classic taped rantings of an alcoholic odd couple have been touted by a variety of sources as visible as Spin and as underground as your older sister's 'zine, since their appearance nearly 20 years ago, and only now are finally receiving the documentary treatment.
